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New technologies are driving transformational changes in the global financial system. Virtual currencies (VCs) and the underlying distributed ledger systems are among these. VCs offer many potential benefits, but also considerable risks. VCs could raise efficiency and in the long run strengthen financial inclusion. At the same time, VCs could be potential vehicles for money laundering, terrorist financing, tax evasion and fraud. While risks to the conduct of monetary policy seem less likely to arise at this stage given the very small scale of VCs, risks to financial stability may eventually emerge as the new technologies become more widely used. National authorities have begun to address these challenges and will need to calibrate regulation in a manner that appropriately addresses the risks without stifling innovation. As experience is gained, international standards and best practices could be considered to provide guidance on the most appropriate regulatory responses in different fields, thereby promoting harmonization and cooperation across jurisdictions.
This paper studies the transmission of crime shocks to the economy in a sample of 32 Mexican states over the period from 1993 to 2012. The paper uses a panel structural VAR approach which accounts for the heterogeneity of the dynamic state level responses in GDP, FDI and international migration flows, and measures the transmission via the impulse response of homicide rates. The approach also allows the study of the pattern of economic responses among states. In particular, the percentage of GDP devoted to new construction and the perception of public security are characteristics that are shown to be associated with the sign and magnitude of the responses of economic variables to crime shocks.
This Fiscal Transparency Evaluation (FTE) report assesses Mexico’s fiscal transparency practices against the IMF’s Fiscal Transparency Code (FTC), including the draft pillar on resource revenue management. Mexico scores relatively well when compared with other Latin American countries and emerging market economies that have undergone a FTE. Out of the 48 principles across four pillars in the FTC, Mexico meets 16 principles at the basic level, 9 principles at the good level and 15 principles at the advanced level, while one principle does not apply. Fiscal transparency practices are strongest in the areas of resource revenue management and fiscal forecasting and budgeting, while the scores on fiscal risks analysis and management are lower.
Strong Recovery and Challenges. Mauritius has rebounded strongly from the pandemic on the back of buoyant tourism, social housing construction, and financial services. Supportive policies facilitated the strong recovery, but challenges remain for securing a sustainable and resilient economy: (i) fiscal and external buffers were eroded during the pandemic, and (ii) vulnerabilities to climate change and an ageing population loom over the medium- to long-term economic prospects.
This paper argues that oil revenue management and public investment in Congo are vulnerable to corruption as a result of limited transparency and accountability. Corruption has potentially contributed to poor macro-fiscal outcomes. The paper acknowledges the authorities’ anti-corruption efforts made so far and proposes further critical reforms to reduce remaining vulnerabilities. Using a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model results show that, depending on the reforms adopted, the potential additional growth can range between 0.8 to 1.8 percent per year over the next 10 years, and debt can decline by 2.25 to 3 percent of GDP per year over the same period. These results suggest that macrofiscal gains from anti-corruption reforms could be substantial even under conservative reform scenarios.
This title presents a survey of the crime problem in Latin America, which takes a very broad and appropriately reductionist approach to analyse the determinants of the high crime levels, focusing on the negative social conditions in the region, including inequality and poverty, and poor policy design, such as relatively low police presence. The chapters illustrate three channels through which crime might generate poverty, that is, by reducing investment, by introducing assets losses, and by reducing the value of assets remaining in the control of households.
This paper studies the volatility of commodity prices on the basis of a large dataset of monthly prices observed in international trade data from the United States over the period 2002 to 2011. The conventional wisdom in academia and policy circles is that primary commodity prices are more volatile than those of manufactured products, even though most of the existing evidence does not actually attempt to measure the volatility of prices of individual goods or commodities. Rather the literature tends to focus on trends in the evolution and volatility of ratios of price indexes composed of multiple commodities and products. This approach can be misleading. Indeed, the evidence presented in this paper suggests that on average prices of individual primary commodities may be less volatile than those of individual manufactured goods.
Introduction.Big data for twenty-first-century economic statistics: the future is now /Katharine G. Abraham, Ron S. Jarmin, Brian C. Moyer, and Matthew D. Shapiro --Toward comprehensive use of big data in economic statistics.Reengineering key national economic indicators /Gabriel Ehrlich, John Haltiwanger, Ron S. Jarmin, David Johnson, and Matthew D. Shapiro ;Big data in the US consumer price index: experiences and plans /Crystal G. Konny, Brendan K. Williams, and David M. Friedman ;Improving retail trade data products using alternative data sources /Rebecca J. Hutchinson ;From transaction data to economic statistics: constructing real-time, high-frequency, geographic measures of consumer sp...
This paper studies how fiscal policy affects loan market conditions in the US. First, it conducts a Structural Vector-Autoregression analysis showing that the bank spread responds negatively to an expansionary government spending shock, while lending increases. Second, it illustrates that these results are mimicked by a Dynamic Stochastic General Equilibrium model where the bank spread is endogenized via the inclusion of a banking sector exploiting lending relationships. Third, it shows that lending relationships represent a friction that generates a financial accelerator effect in the transmission of the fiscal shock.
A new wave of technological innovations, often called “fintech,” is accelerating change in the financial sector. What impact might fintech have on financial services, and how should regulation respond? This paper sets out an economic framework for thinking through the channels by which fintech might provide solutions that respond to consumer needs for trust, security, privacy, and better services, change the competitive landscape, and affect regulation. It combines a broad discussion of trends across financial services with a focus on cross-border payments and especially the impact of distributed ledger technology. Overall, the paper finds that boundaries among different types of service providers are blurring; barriers to entry are changing; and improvements in cross-border payments are likely. It argues that regulatory authorities need to balance carefully efficiency and stability trade-offs in the face of rapid changes, and ensure that trust is maintained in an evolving financial system. It also highlights the importance of international cooperation.